1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications, and, in particular, to telecommunications systems that provide voice messaging.
2. Description of the Related Art
Voice messaging, whether provided by a local telephone answering machine or a network-based system, allows a caller to leave a voice message when the callee is not available to answer the call. When the callee later reviews the voice message, she is typically given the option of either deleting it or retaining it in memory for future processing, e.g., repeated playback. Whether deleting a message involves merely removing pointers or actually clearing memory space of the message bits, deleting means that the message is made unavailable for retrieval by the typical user of the voice-messaging system.
One of the limitations of conventional voice messaging systems is the finite amount of memory allocated to recording incoming voice messages from callers. When messages are saved indefinitely by a callee for future processing, the amount of memory available to record subsequent incoming messages is even further limited. As a result, subsequent callers may be unable to leave new messages if and when the allocated memory is completely filled with old messages. Likewise, when there are multiple outgoing messages, e.g., with specific messages being supplied for particular identified callers, such messages may have relevance for only a limited duration, yet take up memory until manually deleted or changed.